1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to an automatic assembly apparatus, and particularly to an automatic assembly apparatus for inserting electronic connecting pins into apertures of a printed circuit board to connect a circuit pattern formed thereon, and/or mounting leadless capacitors, resistors or inductors, particularly fragile ceramic capacitors on the printed circuit board in succession without being broken irrespective of their uneven dimensions.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Assembling discrete electronic parts on a printed circuit board by hand is a tedious, time-consuming and a costly procedure and particularly difficult to obtain desired circuits continuously. This problem has become more acute in recent years by the reason that electronic parts are more miniaturized and used without lead-wires such as in the case of chip capacitors.
Several types of apparatus have been developed to alleviate the assembly problems as described above. One prior art apparatus is an automatic apparatus which dispenses and mounts electronic parts on the printed circuit board. In this case, the electronic parts such as capacitors, resistors, inductors and the like are made of cylindrical or columnar form so as to fit the automatic apparatus. Furthermore, the electronic parts are leadless having a pair of contact portions of terminals formed at the opposite ends thereof.
This automatic apparatus has provided therein dispensing devices the number of which corresponds to the kinds of electronic parts being used on a printed circuit board. One dispensing device delivers one kind of electronic part continuously through one pipe. In the automatic apparatus, the continuously delivered electronic parts are separated one by one and placed sidelong with their electrodes being horizontally placed, thus being disposed on a circuit pattern of the printed circuit board corresponding thereto. However, the dimensions of electronic parts are actually uneven despite standardized production. As a result, due to unevenness in the dimension of the electronic parts, the apparatus comes unworkable or breads the electronic parts.